You can configure more than one network interface on your NIOS-X server to separate management traffic and data traffic. Management traffic is traffic between the server and the Infoblox Portal while data traffic includes traffic for your Infoblox service such as DNS forwarding proxy. By separating management and data traffic, your server will not become a weak point between two networks.

Configuring multiple network interfaces is also useful if you are hosting multiple Infoblox services that use the same Ethernet port on the same server. If your server has multiple interfaces, you can select specific interfaces for specific services and view the list of all available interfaces and IP addresses on the server.

Multiple Interface Considerations

Before you configure multiple network interfaces for your NIOS-X servers, take the following considerations into account:

• On baremetal deployments, if DNS forward proxy is running on the server and a new interface is added and configured, you must restart the DNS forwarding proxy service for it to listen on the new interface.
• For baremetal deployments, you can configure multiple interface configuration through the Infoblox Portal only after you have changed the service traffic configuration. For example, if you want to change the interface type from WAN to LAN, you must first change the service traffic from ALL to LAN.
• The interface mode will be displayed as Unknown for baremetal deployments because the data cannot be discovered by the Infoblox Portal.
• You can use the Device UI to configure only the primary interface. You should configure the secondary interface through the Infoblox Portal.

For information about how to configure multiple interfaces or modifying the settings on your servers, see Setting IP Interfaces.